We appreciate your concern about reporting burden for hospitals. In the updated version of CMS 506, which will be posted in May 2020 for 2021 reporting, we have replaced extensional value sets Palliative Care (2.16.840.1.113762.1.4.1111.162) and Hospice Care (2.16.840.1.113883.3.3157.1004.20) with grouping value set Palliative or Hospice Care (2.16.840.1.113883.3.600.1.1579) to harmonize with other eCQMs. This grouping value set includes the extensional value set Comfort Measures (1.3.6.1.4.1.33895.1.3.0.45), which as you've noted aligns with several other hospital eCQMs. Please let us know if you have additional questions.​

We are working with hospitals on the implementation of CMS 506 for 2021 submission and are wondering why the codes in the value sets for hospice and palliative care do not align with the Comfort Measures value set currently used in most active eCQMs. There are no overlapping codes. Can you please provide reasoning behind this? Hospitals will have to create additional workflow in order to capture this data as it is unique to 506. See attached.